Step 4: Polish

Step 5: Enjoy

You can use it as I described in the intro, or you can use it as an ornament and tell people where it came from!!!

This was made from something near to indestructable! It's made from a WW2 merlin piston. It was found in a field in Essex, likely from a crashed spitfire - you can see the dents in the piston from the impact.

It all very nice having a merlin piston sitting in your house, but I always think its much better if things can have a use too.

4000 'official' ashtrays were made out of merlin pistons and sold in aid of the RAF (you can read more if you google "merlin piston ashtray"). So I thought that was a good idea, and that's what would become of mine - without the engravings.

It can be used as a coin tray, or as an ash tray. It is perfect for an ashtray as you can hold your cigarette or pipe in the recessed connection points.

Merlin pistons aren't cheap, but you could use any piston you wanted and follow the same process!

Very fun. I have a couple of similar ashtrays which were made by my uncle. He was at SHAEF headquarters in France, and worked in a department which was in charge of collecting captured German material. He had an assortment of DIY objects, (ashtrays bookends etc). he made out of German airplane parts.

if you are on a computer you should just be able to press the "add images" button below the comments box that you type in to. if you are on a tablet or phone, im afraid i dont know. if you cant do it, let me know and i will pm you my email and you could send it to me, and i will post it here.

Whoa, you're way out of my league on that one! All I know is that it was heavy! The grooves around the outside seem the same; maybe there were differences inside, but I don't remember ever turning it upside down to look at the bottom. I'll ask the Sisters and see if someone has it--I'll send you a photo, if I find it.

About This Instructable

Bio:I studied Maths and Computing, worked in an Operation Research department, retrained as a civil engineer, worked on site for some major projects. I'm learning to be a structural engineer at the moment...read more »